“What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat
Or crust and sugar over—
 like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?”

Melissa’s favorite class is creative writing salon on Wednesdays. The assignment for spring vacation is to live with a poem, any poem. Walk with it as a medicine question. Create a piece about it—words or art or music or mime—to present to the class in April.

Lisa (her nickname) realizes Langston Hughes provided no options for transmuting deferred dreams. She is determined to find a way to re-route the angst of longing into fuel, force, power, blessing. Light! Sometimes she feels she is going to explode with yearning.

Lisa is 15 years old, and the bars imprisoning her heart have been dissolved by…what else? LOVE. His name is Busi. Short for Busisiwe. He is her music teacher. Her favorite instrument of many he crafted from Devil’s Club roots is his two toned flute: directing air into its dual chamber creates two notes at once.

On spring vacation her parents and siblings are used to her spending most of the day alone, reconnoitering with them in the evening. Her little sister Philly (short for Philadelphia) sometimes spies on her. This is always rewarding. During the full moon, Lisa conducts pagan rituals in the dark. She makes offerings to La Luna like rivulets of powdered mica dropped into the moonlight from a balcony. Lisa sings to the salt water, trying to merge tones with the ocean’s drone. The dolphins always cavort around whatever craft Lisa is on. The family jokes that Lisa needs to be in your boat for gray whales to approach.

When Philly has graduated from college and is celebrating with a road trip with Lisa, they go out west and do a serendipitous itinerary of hot springs and spas. In Boulder Montana, having walked through the snow to get to the outdoor pools, having convinced the hoteliers to turn off the artificial lights, they are cacoooned in the healing springs and flung into the Milky Way above.

“Remember back when we went to Casa San Lucas and you spent so much time alone? I followed you.”

“Yes darling I know you did.”

“You seemed to be flinging things but I couldn’t see anything. What were you doing, sis?”

“Oh. Well, I was having an affair de coeur. Remember our music teacher Busi? Well he declared himself to me one day and it was like setting off a bomb. My heart burst open with rapture. He was already the only person in the world who GOT ME and my artistic gifts. We loved creating together. Remember the musical? We both knew such partnership comes rarely in life. He was married with four kids, everyone was impressed by how happy and handsome the family were, remember? I was only a child. It was a brewing disaster on sooo many levels.

“I chose ‘A Dream Deferred’ by Langston Hughes as my poem to walk with that spring vacation.

“My presentation for class was to read the poem and then demonstrate with two balloons. One was colored dark indigo blue. The other was pale Florentine yellow. I blew into one up until it was about to burst, then poked it with a needle. It blew up, it startled everybody, they shrieked then laughed nervously. I filled the other balloon with a portable cannister. “Float your blessings to realms unimagined” I wrote in permanent ink, and let it out the window. It bobbled its way up into the sky and then was lost to view. I had discovered that what can happen to a dream deferred is to give it away. Back to Source, the unknown, Great Mother, Infinite Holiness.”

Philly asks: “And how did Busi feel about this giving-it-away approach?”